Operators Titans E006: MAËLYS (With Co-Founder & CMO Yariv Citron)

32:53And then I looked up how many stores Altahad. I'm like, Whoa, okay, that's that's real. I mean, clearly, I'm not the customer for your product. So I forgive myself for that one. You have used this word disruption. A bunch. I actually really think it's cool that you you thought about like, how do I disrupt the face like the meta feed, the Facebook feed? I think that's a great way to think of things like, how do you put a message out there that's super unique? does that same sort of thinking still exist today in the company, particularly when it comes to product development? Because I've been on your site, I've been clicking around stuff, and you don't just sell this booty mask anymore.

33:33Now it's like this clinically proven body solutions. Yep. Is that still the way that you guys look at product? Is like we need to do something different and disruptive? Exactly. So disruptive is from the very first days of Maylis. And again, going back, it's such a saturated category, both body care and skincare. And the reason why I'm feeling very confident and comfortable with where we are at the moment is because I think that Maleys has a very unique positioning that makes us stand out in this saturated category. And part of it, as you pointed out, is selling clinically proven body solution, things that other brands do not sell.

34:15And when we compare Meles to other body care brands, I think that most of them, it's all about the experience. So it's about the scent and the texture and enjoying why you apply the product. In Meles, it's obviously about that as well. So we develop amazing products with great scents and great texture, but it's also way more than that. It's about really making our customers feel better, more confident, and more empowered with their own skin. and to me when an example that i always like to give about what's trending what's not because in beauty there are lots of companies and brands that are trendy to me a specific i don't know product that it's all about the brazilian scent in today one might like this specific scent but in iri from now she might not like it anymore but in meili's results and really seeking for results to me something that will be everlasting it's an evergreen women will always look to feel more confident with their own skin and we're seeing the direction of where the world is going with ozempic and manjaro and gmp1 injections and their number one side effect is loose skin and thankfully male is a several products that are clinically proven to tackle loose skin in different areas of your body um and and since in the past few years we launched 30 products and Some of them were the first to bring the market and some of them were the first to bring the resorts driven approach.

35:43So, yeah, I'm very happy with where we are positioned. And you pointed out very correctly that we're trying to do things very differently than the other brands. I like that. I mean, Jason's known on our show for talking about product being like the number one thing to focus on. I really like what you're hitting on here, which is it's not just make a great product, but there's a big difference between like a fad product in a, in a genuine long-term trend, like an evergreen, like things, things are pointing in this direction. You know, the, like the one chart business thing, like GLP ones, they're on the rise here and we can kind of like, we are positioned to sort of ride part of that wave.

36:22I think that's a, for people listening is a great lesson in product development. Your, I am so curious how you think about this today because you've talked, you just talked about meeting the customer where they are so you started out dc then you went omni-channel and not just physical omni-channel but like tiktok shops amazon everywhere how has your marketing mix for lack of a better term like how has that changed as you guys have grown you know let's say from like dc only is probably very meta heavy uh to today like can you describe what marketing looks like in this brand today? Yeah, so at the moment, we have three channels, three types of layers.

37:13That's how I like to call it in our marketing mix. The first one is D2C. So it all started with D2C. That's the bread and butter of the business. We're performance marketeers by nature. And as you mentioned, it's about really scaling the business, managing the campaigns in meta uplovin snapchat tiktok shop google it's about trying to really reduce scack in a crazy environment where cpms just go up on a yearly basis um and optimizing the funnel obviously a year and a half ago we did a very interesting change to the business that we changed the model the acquisition model to a try before you buy so in a way showing our customers that we believe in our products and that we let them try the products for three weeks and only if they see resorts they they pay for the products and that made a very significant impact a good impact on on lowering cac levels so that's the first channel and the second one is brand now going back to the question that you asked me about expansion and retail and omni channel Well, again, when you want to build a brand, one of the initiatives that we thought of is that we must invest in brand awareness.

38:30And I'm a big believer that there is a certain point to where D2C can take you. In D2C, you spend in direct response campaigns. Usually, you spend a dollar and you look for a positive return. Most of the times, in one day click. In brand awareness, that's not the case. you invest money and you look for this halo effect that will create an impact on the upper funnel and maybe will create an impact on other channels and if you're very good at it and jason spoke about luck if you're also lucky then eventually you will see some sort of an impact on the bottom line on ibid and revenue um but that's definitely not something that you're seeing not after a few days not after several weeks and sometimes not even after a few months so we got a decision that we need to invest in brand awareness.

39:21And today, in the past year and a half, we have a dedicated budget for brand awareness campaigns, for product collaborations, influencers, celebs, out-of-home campaigns. And we see that when we make these smart, strategic campaigns, and it's not about really wasting your money and throwing it everywhere, it needs to be very smart. we see that it makes an impact and it also affects TikTok shop, Ulta and D2C. And the last one already spoke about it is retail. Now, retail gives us two things. The first one is credibility. And it doesn't matter what happens when you are selling your products at Ulta.

40:02It adds credibility to your brand in addition of just being digital only. And the second thing is that we tested many times the incrementality of Ulta and D2C. And what we saw is that it doesn't matter what you will do. There are certain type of customers that they won't convert in digital. They will watch your ad. They will maybe follow you on Instagram or Snapchat or TikTok. But they will only buy the product the next time they go to Ulta or Sephora. They will look for it. They will try to fit it, to hold it in their hands, maybe to redeem some of their loyalty points in Ulta and only then they will decide to buy it.

40:41So we know for a fact that Ulta is very incremental. So these are the three channels today and I think that today for Mail is when we're trying to build a brand and we are a brand, all of these three, they're important at the same specific level. Do you think the retail piece in Ulta is a trust thing? Do you think people just see something online and in general, they're like, I don't know, I see a lot of stuff online and that by being in Ulta, you're just like you instantly gain trust? Correct. It's like a stamp. It's a stamp and you gain credibility from it saying that if it sells at Ulta, then it's not a scam.

41:23And I think that we wanted to add this credibility because we put so much effort in our product development that we didn't want just to be another D2C company. So I think that it's both credibility and also revenues. We are seeing incremental sales from sending our products at Ulta. Yeah, I have no doubt. You also mentioned you're making investments in brand and that you carve it out. so like this is a different budget to you than say like performance marketing right a direct response um correct and jason's done a ton of this with hex clad like they've done a super bowl ad they've like they've got some kind of deal with the yankees they've uh which by the way jason just so we're clear the blue jays did win oh here we go i'm not even a baseball fan i watch the blue jays are the blue jays are finally finally get a couple of wins everyone's crazy First time in a decade.

42:18I got an email from another Canadian. Thanks, guys. Do I dunk on everyone when I constantly win? Sometimes. So, Yarev, I'm curious on the brand thing because Hexclad has, I think, been quite successful with these brand moves. How do you guys, number one, how do you create the budgets? Is it a percentage of your total marketing spend that you allocate? And then two, how are you measuring? Like you say, we want it to be smart. How do you actually know if it's like, this is a smart placement for brand spend? Yeah, so it all depends because if the brand investment is something that we're doing in D2C, so let's say, I don't know, running an ad, a brand awareness ad in Meta.

43:08So it's mostly about leaf test and geo test. And that's how you measure it. Same thing goes to TV. but if it's mostly offline things like PR events and influencers then it's very hard to measure it there are some metrics like EMV which is the earned media value that some companies that they show you what what is the total number of EMV that you generated from this campaign but again it's very high level and then top of funnel campaigns so yeah going back to your question we have a specific percentage out of the total budget that in a way we're saying that's something that we're willing to invest just as an halo effect even if we won't notice any impact on numbers revenues ibida it's something that we're willing to invest just for the sake of of of having a brand awareness campaign because you believe because you believe it will help right like you cannot quantify everything in this world as much as you would like to i always say this All models are wrong anyway, to an extent.

44:17We did that same thing, Yaris, in 2022. We started the year by saying, okay, we're just going to invest, I don't know, X million in brand. One million, two million. It wasn't huge. It was real money. We're just going to do it. Prior to that, I think the easiest way to invest in brand is through PR and earned media. So you mentioned that. One thing that the founders of Hexclad did really well from the beginning was they knew that if they were going to launch a business, they needed to have a PR agency. They needed to get the word out there through PR. And I remember very early on, they somehow managed to get picked up in Oprah's favorite thing.

45:01And I don't think we use it anymore, but I think for years we used that book, Oprah's favorite things. But it is really hard to determine the brand investment, how much to put into it. I would be curious if you could drill down on that a little bit more. In what way? Yeah, like what percentage? We're just going to do it, right? Like a lot of it is, you know, we're just going to do it. So it's kind of like how much and where? I think that today it's mostly like single digits since we just started a year and a half ago. So we're really trying to test the surface and to see. I think that if we will see that it also contributes the revenues and the EBITDA, then obviously it will grow as the company grows.

45:56But at the moment, it's single digits because we know that this is something that we're willing to put aside. even if we lose it, that's something that we can live with. Quick break. Operators Titans is brought to you by AppLovin. This is an S &P 500 mobile gaming ad platform. It is opening up its self-serve ads manager, Axon, for the first time ever. And it is offering you, our listener,$5 ,000 in ad credits. If you spend$5 ,000, that is free money. You should take it. but you need to have an invite-only URL and a code to get access, we've got that for you. Just stick around for a second. Look, first, before we get into that, my brand, Pila Case, we have been advertising with AppLovin since, I think, October of last year.

46:40We have spent a lot of money here. We are ramping up for this Black Friday, Cyber Monday. The reason we are doing that is AppLovin has quickly become the most incremental ad channel for us in 2025. 25. We've recently done a holdout on this with house, another great partner of ours. And it has proven actually the most incremental of all new channels that we've tested this year. It is now our number three spending ad channel behind meta and Google. Do you know how hard that is to get to that spot? I actually think they can overcome it, but we'll see. Here is why we like app loving at our brand. First is it is audio on vertical videos of your best performers.

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48:01The rest of the operators are too. And I think you would be silly to at least not try it. I really recommend you do the same. Let's go back to this Titans episode.

48:13yeah i think yarev it's i think it's a great thing to drill a little bit for you to go deeper on that so thank you because a lot of people in consumer you know a lot of people listening to this aren't at the nine figures and upscale yet and they're trying to figure out like how do i invest in brand like what is brand number one and then how do you invest in it and i do find the consistent thing with people, the brands that figure out how to do this, they do end up, I think they're very customer focused, number one, right? Like they really understand their customer. They understand the kind of media that their customer consumes.

48:48They know the influencers, the creators that matter to them, you know, the publications, like you kind of have a sense for like, this is who my customer is and where they are. And you can start deploying dollars there. I think the single digit percentage thing is actually a great, like, it's a great place to start. It's, it's like, what's an amount of money that that swing from an asymmetry perspective is like, I'm going to invest this money. And if I lose it, it's fine. It's not going to hurt me. It's not going to be like a death blow, but that the potential upside again, asymmetry is really high.

49:19Right. And when you hit some of these brand moments, they are, they, they can change everything, right? Like you can get reach that you just didn't get out of your performance machine. Exactly. I think that maybe one thing that I would say to someone who was watching the show and then wants to invest in Brent, I think that there are two things that I would always like to say. The first one is start small. I wouldn't start from the first moment with a Super Bowl commercial. No, but that's an asymmetric swing for Hexclad at his size, right? So that's probably maybe the first thing that I would say.

49:58And second, I would say that you need to do it very smart and deep. And what I mean by that is let's take as an example influencers. Influencers today, it's not what it used to be three, four, five, six years ago, not even in the days that we used to collaborate with Khloe Kardashian. It's not the same. It doesn't have the same impact. So when, let's say, you're running an influencer campaign, you need to really check 1 ,000 times that you engage with the right influencers. Um, and it's not the, the, the size doesn't really matter in these type of things. No, no, it's a sense for it. You know, um, Jason's obviously our, our, our, uh, our colleague here on the show, but having listened to Danny, the, his, uh, the original founder of Hexclad, listening to Danny talk about brand Jason, you really like, you can see that like Danny gets it.

50:51Danny really understands like the hex clad brand and who the customer is and he just bleeds it. And I think that that's actually pretty important. He's also not a pure D to C guy. No, he's not. That's actually really important. But Jason, I think that that's actually a superpower for you guys. Yeah. Is that Danny's like a bit more like, no, no, this is just how you build a brand. And like, these are the right moves to make. And I think that's some, that's sometimes lost in the D to C world, right? Like this just makes sense because like there's tactical stuff. Like we recently did a speaking of GeoLift, like we did an incrementality study with House and Apple.

51:32And it's like the most incremental spend we've put out this year. It started small and I'm like, I just want to see how good this is. But then the results came back and I'm like, holy hell, like why have we not been spending more money here? Number one, I just think we did a bad job of it originally. But like now it's been wildly incremental. and in the past you know we've done channel expansion simply by looking at like last like first click or last click and like using multi-touch attribution which we still do but now I'm starting to think more Yara of what you're saying which is like where can we put brand dollars and for us it's definitely influencer where can we put brand dollars that we just know we know that that's our customer like we can see them engaging like we know that this creator has our customer in spades and they can reach them in a way that we can't.

52:23There's like an association to it. There's all kinds of stuff. So I really like that you've kind of got a guide of like, we're going to put single digits in and we're going to measure however we can. And that's what we're going to do. Can you share more about the Uploading case study? Because I have an interesting one as well. I mean, for us, it was straight up like we need to find, Like we've sort of reached the marginal frontier of our dollars deployed in like meta and Google, which are our two big primary channels for our DTC business. And House came to us and they're like, well, like you guys should do a proper holdout with AppLovin.

53:05Like, let's actually see if it's incremental. And what's interesting is like for the first week, it was not looking good. And then by the time we got through the test window and the what do they call it like the treatment window afterwards, it was by far the most incremental new channel we've added two years. And I mean, we're like, we've acquired millions of customers. So like for us to find like a positive, like an incremental dollar now, it takes work. just too much money spent, too many customers acquired. So Apple Oven has actually been awesome. I'd love to hear your experience there, if you don't mind.

53:48Yeah, my experience started 12 months ago. And last year, someone in the name of Rafael, that is a very good friend of mine from Apple Oven. Yeah, Rafael is awesome. Approached me and told me that they're starting with several D2C brands. and honestly in the first few months it wasn't that good it wasn't successful and remember that also like in in q1 this year you know we used to spend several thousands of dollars but nothing very significant and then we stopped it for a while because i wasn't convinced as well that it was incremental and at early q2 we integrated with the tool of meta called advanced analytics.

54:31Basically, what this tool allows us is to pull up all the transactions, the orders from our CRM and with the SQL of Meta to really identify based on Meta people ID, how many of them engaged with an ad of Meta. And then I decided to approach Rafa and I told him, listen, Rafa, many CMOs are asking themselves, is it incremental or not? What I suggest, let's run a test let's spend$150 ,000 let's divide it 50 50 between me and you I will use advanced analytics that most of the brands they don't have this type of tool and let's prove together that it is incremental and the budget was supposed to be$150 ,000 for a test of 14 days after six days we spent two hundred thousand dollars a day so it was insane after very few days we i i asked my data scientist to check the results and we saw that it is so incremental and as you mentioned that probably one of the most incremental channels um so yeah it's an amazing success story as well i i was surprised to say the least because like your story and mine were similar.

55:48We started last year. Then we came off because I'm like, I don't know how incremental this is. We're spending money everywhere. We spend money across all channels. And then, I mean, kudos to house. I think Olivia over there was the one who kind of whacked me on the head over Slack. And she's like, hey, dummy, give it a shot. And then I think I was actually at the Meta Performance Summit, Jason talking to Roman, who we just did his episode of this show, Yarev. and roman also gave me a whack upside they had a dummy uh and then we went and we went and tried it so we've been super happy i am i am very curious yarov uh like you're on track to do well over nine figures in revenue this year and 150 million yeah 150 million like that's just like on its own congratulations that's freaking awesome uh love to hear it really do um there's this old sort of cliche in business, not even a cliche, it's true.

56:46What got you here won't get you to where you're going. What do you believe to be true today? Marketing, leadership, that you believe to be true today that you didn't then? Or is there things that you're like, we just had to let go of that are now going to take us forward? Yeah. Great question. I think that the early days of Meili's, when you launch a startup, you have so many problems and concerns and issues that basically occur on a daily basis. And it's all about solving them very quickly. You need to adapt and to execute it because you're in survival mode. Most of the startups, they don't have money and at least we were bootstrapped.

57:32So you can decide one day that you wake up and you entirely change the business strategy. And then it will take you several days to execute it because you simply don't have many customers. So you're not afraid to impact the business. You have nothing to lose. You only think about today, maximum tomorrow. And in Maylist today, in a business that is with nine figures of business, it's way more strategic and we're a well-known brand. So it's mostly today about being more deep and well-rounded with every decision, strategic decision that we take because the likelihood of impacting our brand our customers or our metrics today is way more significant than what it was a few years back so just as an example uh to try before you buy acquisition model that we changed a year ago let's say that we decide to do it in the first early days of mailies it would probably take us a week but a year ago when we decided to change it to try before you buy.

58:35It took us six, seven months. And it took us six or seven months because we really had to meet with all the relevant stakeholders, all the departments, to check it one more time and to talk to our customers and really to ensure that we do not impact anyone, not the metrics, not the customers. And it's not like we're not moving fast because we do, but it's about moving fast given all the restrictions. And I think that the same thing goes hand in hand with marketing spent. As we both shared, that in the early days, it's about just meeting your CPA goal. If you meet your CPA goal, you scale the campaign.

59:11But in a business in our size that you spend dozens of millions of dollars every year, it's not just about meeting the CPA goal. First click, last click, it doesn't matter. It's about really proving that the specific channel is incremental. And it's about running geotests and leaf tests because just even if one channel, one be incremental, it's a huge loss for the business. We're talking about millions of dollars. So I would say that today maybe we're more well-rounded and deep and not moving so fast that we execute and change things on a daily basis. It's funny that I think we've talked about this on the show a bunch, but the bigger you get, the more surface area you have for things to go right.

59:55but I also think the thought the side that doesn't get talked about as much and the reason you need to be more thoughtful and strategic is that that surface area also works the other way so like when you do make a mistake there's a lot of room for it to go sideways right like when you when you lose money at scale there's zero there's more zeros in both directions um so I think that's a lot of bad pr do a lot of customers that you might lose subscription recurring orders yeah there are many things yeah are you guys uh would you describe yourself as a like it does your business work because people come by and come back and buy a lot like are you an ltv business yeah yeah we are i think that on its own is awesome uh yeah i've seen you can't really be the brand with with without retention because if you just keep acquiring customers more and more and they leave after one one time purchase then it's not really a brand you're building a d2c machine that is just acquiring customers.

1:00:54So for us, it's very important that we are a LTV business. I love to hear it. I've seen a lot of skincare companies that don't have great repeat. To the point where I just assumed there wasn't a lot in skincare, right? When I thought that there should be. So it's very cool to see that you guys have done it. I guess listening to you talk about, and Jason, I want your take on this after him too. Listening to you talk about being more thoughtful more strategic at this size now if you think of like yar of 15 years ago like a much younger version of yourself what's a piece of advice that a younger version of yourself would give you today that you think would be really important to hear um wow that's a great question i um I think that it's probably don't forget to enjoy the ride and to have fun I think that when you start a business it's a chaos but you know it's fun chaos and as we spoke and as we mentioned you have many problems and many issues that might close the business but when you overcome these issues and it can happen on a daily basis you celebrate every win even if it's the smallest one like it's a huge victory you know i remember how we started mailies and and me and the founders we launched the very first ad and it was 8 a.m and we decided to do a night with no sleep because we really wanted to perfect the the the funnel and we really wanted to test that everything is working well before going live with the first ad in mailies and I remember that it was 8 a.m.

1:02:42after a night with no sleep and the four of us, we gathered around the TV and we watched Google Analytics users in real time and we were hyped and I remember the very first moment that the first user landed on the text for purchase page and at that exact moment, that was probably one of the most exciting moments that I had we started to jump and to dance and to laugh and to you know to to kiss each other and it was such a moment pure moment that can only happen when you're young and foolish and today in mailies it's more like you know a well-known brand and you have a lot of pressure from your investors and then growing and profitability and you forget to win and you forget to sorry you forget to enjoy from these wins so i think that i would probably arrive back then would probably say to iris to day don't forget to enjoy yeah there there is a lot of pressure and yeah the business is in is scanning fast but uh even though celebrate the small wins oh i love that jason what would what would a young panzer tell you yeah it's a little bit it's different because everyone has their own personal experience but i i just think that investing in your network really early on and all these people wind up helping you.

1:04:01I've done things. I didn't do enough of it early on. I have an incredible network now. And small investments that I made early on actually really helped me, but it could have been even better. Getting out there, talking to people, building that network, and being a giver, not a taker. I didn't do a lot of that. I was much more analytical, internal, thinking, executing. All those things were important. But kind of like when I became a banker, I learned to be a marketer. As I was a lawyer, I was an executor. And as a banker, I became a marketer and an executor. So that's the other thing. It's like, I don't have to talk about that with Yari because he started out as a marketer pretty early on.

1:04:42And a lot of the people that listen to us, they are marketers. So it's kind of like preaching to the choir. But I would say it's the investment in your network and your time. There are a lot of people that are out there on Twitter building a big Twitter following, which is their network. I think that's super valuable. But that offline network is massive. I just think that's an area where a lot of the younger people and people in their 30s, too, who are working on businesses. It's like, just get out there, talk to everyone, and it will definitely pay a huge dividend. I couldn't agree more. I actually did a lot of that when I was younger.

1:05:25Then I got away from it. Now I'm doing it again. I'm like, man, I forgot how good this is. It's also in person. If you're on the other side of the planet, so this is probably harder for you to do here. But can you guys share how do you do it? What's the best strategy? I go to events now. Like I, I, like last week I was at, in Montana, like I went to fricking Bozeman, Montana, which is in the middle of nowhere, um, to hang out with like 200 other brands. And you know, the fun thing for me was like, most of these brands are much smaller than us. And it was so much fun listening to how, like what they're doing, how they're thinking about growth, like the things that they're struggling with, where they're getting wins, especially the younger guys and younger girls.

1:06:06Like they're just, there's a creativity and an energy that you have when you're younger that I think as you get bigger, we lose a little bit of, right? Cause we fall into the, like, I've got this big ass machine I need to manage. I've got a board, you know, banks and covenants. And there's just a different set of problems now that we talk about every day. Like after this, I got to talk about contribution margin reporting and consistency across all the shit. I'm like, this is not fun, but I got to do it. This is like, what's my next meeting. So there's a mentality. there's a mentality yes that that i've learned which you have to you have to start everything every conversation or every meeting with you never know where that conversation can go you just never know where it can go and there's a lot it's like it's random it's a random walk in many ways and of course you can't just like burn time because time is our most precious commodity but if you just say i'm going to allocate a certain just like you allocating a certain investment in brand it's resource allocation you know it's but i'm going to allocate certain time into just getting out there talking to people and and i don't know i don't have time to go to lots of conferences i actually enjoy them um but it's just like figuring out wherever you are like go to some place wherever you you know at a at a in the right venue you should just be like working the room talking to people collecting names yeah and uh you never know where the conversation could go yarev there's just a serendipity to it that you it's like brand everything brand is a great comp jason yeah that was you just kind of know that it's worthwhile and you do wind up giving like nine like nine times out of ten you're giving more than you're getting but man there's like every now and again there's one thing like last week i got one thing that I was like, oh, that's probably like$50 million of incremental revenue to this business.

1:08:05That's how excited I was about that one thing. So I think it's just worth spending the time there and actually creating the time to go do that. I'm curious, Yarev, do you think as you guys get bigger, is every year and every new level of growth, does it get easier? it doesn't i i i want you to talk to my wife and ask her this question she would probably laugh in front of your face but no it doesn't get any easier the same amount of time that i worked several years ago and then i assume that you guys would say the same thing it's just i wouldn't say that it gets harder but it's a different type of arch in the first day is about surviving and today's as you mentioned it's about a direct contribution margin and gross margins and investors and board meetings and profitability.

1:08:57So it's a different type of hardship, but it doesn't get any easier. Okay. I got to ask, you're running a company built around women's body insecurities, body positivity, while being a male founder, that has got to create some unique pressures. What is some of the most uncomfortable feedback you've received or how have you adjusted sort of like how you make products and how you run the company today just knowing this like you're you're not you're not the the customer of your own product yeah so yeah that's a valid question um that uh we got from many uh people at least mostly in the beginning how come a bunch of guys decide that one day that they want to launch their own body care brand and i do get it but listen we never pretended to say that we are body care customers or we're beauty mavens and we tried many products before we launched maybe we never pretended to be this type of people but what we did is that from the moment that we decided that we really want to launch a body care brand we excessively tried to learn every part and every side of this category so whether it's customer reviews and and and and comments customer try consumer trials and seeing what the benchmark and what our competitors are doing we really try to educate ourselves in any way that we possibly can and and we also recognize and identified how underserved our customers were before we created mailies so as i mentioned with the body solutions and today i'm feeling more confident and more comfortable saying to your question that i'm more familiar when it comes to saggy skin and stretch marks and cellulite i'm more familiar probably than most women but the bottom line is that you have to understand who is taking the decisions and today in maleys we have an amazing product development team that is comprised out of amazing women that they're the one who actually lead the product development strategy so from ideation to execution and all the clinical trials and the very long and really rigorous product development process so eventually it's about rom and myself to let them take the deed and we're obviously they're part of this group uh just to really ensure that from the marketing side maybe and from a financial side it makes sense but when it comes to product and the development they're taking the the the final essay what do you want malees to be known for then um i i want mailies to be known for a brand they changed the discussion around body care a brand that really reshaped the category i want mailies to be known as as a brand that made women feel more secure and more empowered with their own skin and i want to be known for as a brand that really took body care seriously when no other brand did.

1:12:00So I guess like as a, you're 37, you said? Like you're 37? Sorry? You said you're 37 years old? Yep, 37. So the follow-up question then is like, it's tough to answer this at, it's hard to answer this at any age, but like then what do you personally want to be known for? I think that early days, so maybe 14, 13 years ago, if you would ask me this question, it would was probably be the number one marketeer number one d2c marketeer because it's a lot of ego but today when you're mature and you have kids you understand that it's not about being number one so today i would say that i want to be known for someone that never stepped away that always worked hard always working hard uh someone that even till this day manage campaign optimize and scaling the campaigns in meta and up loving uh checking landing pages on a daily basis and honestly the same responsibilities that i have today i had also several years ago and the reason why i'm doing it is because i'm enjoying and i'm loving my work um so i just want to be known for that love it man do you uh that's great i love the hard work comment because i think there's just so much reward and like having something that you actually really do want to work hard on um jason we've talked about that a lot it's like just and when you find something it just doesn't feel like work you can just go and it's great yeah you've got to be obsessed too and that's that's where it comes from you can be obsessed when um when you when you enjoy it when when it feels like when it feels right to you that's that's the i think that's the difference maker with so many people that we talk to like that and that's a difference maker and just being great at anything there's a level of obsessions for a period of time i think it's awesome that you already realized that there's other there's other people that can help uh whether it's a ceo whether it's a product development team i think there's a someone put in one of our chats uh recently matt like the person who said oh i i wish like the ceo said like i wish i could clone myself and do all of your jobs i know i'm like you know don't say that that was so good wow that was that was so good you know it's like what do i want to be known for honestly i i just want to be known as a good guy you know like i want to be known like a good about like a good person that helped build a successful business yeah yeah i agree contribute uh i agree i got asked that recently and i was like i just want to be known as somebody who tried like that's it you know like i'm always just trying um Yarev, this is my last question for you because I just like the way you think.

1:14:44Is there a question that you think entrepreneurs are always asking, maybe you or just in general, but that just seems like they're missing the point, like where they're way off? yeah um i there is one specific thing that many times entrepreneurs founders that they want to launch their own business they come to me and they want to share their idea and at the end of the conversation each time i'm asking the same question what's the next steps and sometimes some of them or the majority of them they're saying listen so we're going to test and we're going to launch some sort of a POC, but we're still going to keep our existing and current job because we need the paycheck and we need the money.

1:15:35And we're going to do it as a side business. And the moment that I hear it, I'm always saying the same thing. Please, if that's your perspective, don't do it. Don't launch your own startup because you're just going to spend and waste your money and a lot of your time because I believe, and we spoke about it again and again in the past hour, that in startups there are so many things and so many problems. So you really have to be not 100 % concentrated and focused. It needs to be 150%. And I don't believe in having a cushion to fall back. I think, and you know, I heard once a motto, a quote of Tony Robbins that said, when you want to take the island, burn the fucking boats.

1:16:24And I'm a big believer in that specific quote. I don't believe in plan B. I never plan a plan B. I believe that it only distracts you from plan A. And sometimes, yeah, you jump off a cliff, as I said at the beginning, and the parachute won't open. And you will have to shut down your business and lose probably everything like I did in Betomania. But sometimes the parachute will open, like in the case of Maylis and you will succeed. But it doesn't matter what you do. You can't have them both. You can't stay and work as an employee and for three hours a day work on your startup. It just doesn't work this way.

1:17:03There's a lot of the very successful founders I know. And Jason, I'm sure you can agree to this and Yarev too. There's a level of conviction that these people have that is bordering on like naive, you know, like they're just like, no, this is going to work or or whatever. Right. And even in the day-to-day decision-making inside their company, you can just tell like when a, when a founder or an operator has just got such high conviction and everybody else could be telling them no. And they're like, they're the ones who would just be like, yes, this is like, we, I know this is the right move. Um, there's something about being all in there's something about being all in there really is you know that's what that's what uh i mean and look you gotta have money to pay the bills um danny and cole like danny was all in and cole was actually working on the side to to help bring in money to help fund the business but that's they kind of knew right like that's just that was their deal one was going to work full time the other one was going to like keep hustling elsewhere and actually just putting putting money in um but But regardless, the ones that are the most successful, the ones that they're just all in, right?

1:18:18Yariv was all in. He leveraged everything to do it. And because the burn in the boats concept, like Cortez burned his ships. That's where it comes from when the Spanish came. Cortez burned his ships because that way his people were really motivated. Yeah. And that's good motivation. We're winning. But Jason, I want to add to what you said that today, I think that if you look back in the days that, you know, 15 years ago that we used to launch a startup, you needed to raise more money than what you need to do today with this AI evolution. And that today, honestly, you can do anything and everything on your own with just the help of AI.

1:19:02So it's not a matter of money, at least from my understanding. And obviously you need to pay the bills, but I think that it's not for everyone. And that's part of it. And again, I'm not sure that it would probably take four loans from four different banks to pay to Chloe if each one of us had his own side job. Right. Yeah, I think it's a great lesson. I mean, it's different strokes for different folks, right? And different stages of life, I think, is what Jason's hitting on. So, Yara, I think that's a great one.

1:19:35Okay, I want to switch us to, Yara, We do this segment at the end of every one of these shows called the Titan 10. I've got a handful of questions. I want to ask them and I want you to answer them as like off the cuff and natural and gut feel as you possibly can. And we're going to try to do this as fast as we can. And this is just to give people like more tactical things to work from. So you ready to go? I am. Okay, awesome. So the first one is you get to a desert island and you have to manage your business from this desert island. Okay. you get to look at a dashboard and there's three metrics on that dashboard that tell you what is happening in your business what are those three numbers um i would say ltv cac and loss ratio and loss ratio to me is the amount of transactions that got declined refunds chargebacks from the total amount of transactions oh i like that i haven't heard that one yet cool yeah uh you also get to take a book okay but it cannot be a business book so it's something that i read a year ago and changed my life let them theory of man robbins oh cool what was it what was it let them theory you should read it it's an amazing book that really changed my life i'm gonna read that i've heard of it i have not read it you know yeah I like doing this show.

1:21:02I get stuff to read. It makes me smart. Yeah. The Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins. I got it. Cool. Got it. Awesome. What is your contrarian belief about business that you think that other people might think you're crazy for?

1:21:23Not sure if it's a contrarian belief, but I think that it's what I said, that many founders, They try to delegate the responsibility of managing campaigns once their startup is growing and their company is growing. And my contrarian belief probably is that I still, even to this day, I'm the one who's managing all the campaigns and scaling the budgets. It is actually, you'd be surprised, I believe that is contrarian. But we do know, Jason, I know a lot of founders. I'm one of them, by the way. I'm still in. Like before this, I was in meta. And I was looking at numbers. and I was messaging my head growth and I was like, dude, something's wrong in Canada.

1:21:59And I can just tell because I'm like, I spend enough time reading the damn matrix that I just know. What, in your opinion, is the single most important word in leadership? Example. I think that each and every one of my employees, they know that every single thing that I will preach to them, I'm the one who will do it on a daily basis. without example you can't be a leader you just spoke to jason's like soul uh that's like that's a hex clad thing right there at the beginning we have common things that we share oh it's so good what uh okay then what's the most the single most important word in business um i think that jason spoke about it he called it obsession i call it self-discipline many founders they say motivation but I think that motivation comes and goes and I would say that especially during the bad times I'm not motivated and if someone is saying that he's motivated the entire time then he's lying and self-discipline is these daily routines that you keep doing the same things over and over again and eventually you make a progression so self-discipline is the to me is the most important word.

1:23:16All right. I like that one. Okay. So then speaking of habits, best meal of the day and why? I don't have best meal of the day. I do have a best meal of the week. Oh, okay. The best meal of the week is Kiddush, Friday night. That's the only time of the week that I'm really able to sit down with my wife and my kids and to eat around the same table because otherwise, all of the other meals I'm working and I'm at the office or I'm coming back while everyone is sleeping and then I'm eating all by myself. So I would say that Friday night. Oh, I love that. That's like an anchor weekly meal. That's pretty awesome, man.

1:23:58Yeah. Very cool. It is. What's the most overrated growth tactic? Remarketing. I think that today with the progress of the algorithms, You do not need to run a specific remarketing campaigns. We do not exclude it from the prospective campaigns, and we'll let the algorithm basically decides if and who to retire it. Love it. Okay, then the obvious next question is, what's the most underrated growth tactic right now? So what are you excited about? I think that it's post-click. I think again that in today's world with the progression of algorithms, you can't target specific profile anymore. And there are two ways to impact, to make an impact on the algorithm and reduce CPA.

1:24:52The first one is creative and the second one is post-click. I think that most brands are aware of creative and iterations and productions. So they also, they take care of it. But for post-click experience or what happens from the moment that someone clicks on an ad, I think that most companies, they don't take care of it. And most companies are relying on one funnel. So to me, that's probably, I think that this is an underrated tactic that you should always try. At least my goal is to aim for two or three funnels for each product. Love it, man. That's great. Yarev, that is all we have for you.

1:25:33This has been awesome.